1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a color image forming apparatus utilizing an electrophotographic recording system, such as a laser printer, a copying machine, and a fax machine.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is known an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine and a laser printer, which use an electrophotographic recording system. In the image forming apparatus utilizing the electrophotographic recording system, for example, the following electrophotographic process is executed. First, a surface of a photosensitive drum is uniformly charged to, for example, −600 V by a charging device. After that, laser emission is performed by a laser exposure device to form an electrostatic latent image on the photosensitive drum. Then, toner image is adhered to the electrostatic latent image by a developing device to form a toner image, and the toner image is transferred onto a transfer member by a transfer device.
Residual toner on the photosensitive drum is removed by a drum cleaning device. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-281944 describes the idea of removing the residual potential on the photosensitive drum by the light irradiation with a pre-exposure lamp to serve the photosensitive drum for the subsequent image formation.